Wooden spoons, if no better ones are on hand, will have been whittled out by some handy whittler. The liquid is taken out into small vessels for individual use, and gradually stirred and cooled. And you taste. It is positively irresistible. And you taste again, and another taste is in order; charming is perhaps the only word which expresses the pleasure of partaking of this more than toothsome tit-bit. Positively there is nothing else in nature to compare with it, and just what the charm is no one can exactly say, only it is the peculiar maple flavor which maple alone, of all things in the world, gives, which causes one to keep on tasting, even to running a serious risk of tasting and partaking too frequently for the dimensions of an ordinary stomach. When it will “blow” is the next interesting point in the process. The sugar maker inserts a piece of a small bent twig into the mass, and blows upon the syrup adhering to the twig. If it comes off in flakes or bubbles, then it’s done, and the kettle is swung off from the fire that it may not be burnt. And now for the wax, which to many is the most toothsome part of the whole. Many prefer the wax to the warm sugar. Then dip out some of the hot sugar, still bubbling in the kettle, and pour it quickly upon the nearest snow. In a moment it cools, as it melts a shallow furrow in the snow. Now comes a sticky wax, which will effectually seal together the upper and lower jaws of the participant if he chews lustily. But it’s so sweet, so pure and pleasant, and it’s all so jolly, that such experiences are always red-letter days in one’s life calendar. Pour more syrup on the snow and more wax is the result, and the knowing ones break off the wax in small fragments and allow it to gradually dissolve upon the tongue. And the joke goes around about the green hand and the greedy one, who has his jaws transfixed with the wax, and is unable to speak for a few moments until the wax has partially dissolved. If the warm sugar was good, yea, incomparably good, this wax is glorious. And you eat, and chat, and eat again, and there’s no rancidness about this maple product to cause your throat to become raw, as it were, as all other sweets do. And so you eat on with impunity, each one’s own individual stomach’s capacity being alone the measure as the amount of nectar one should consume. And this is a sugaring-off. Reader, if you have not already tried it, don’t fail to make an effort to get to a sugaring-off, and my word for it you will never regret it. We all deplore the loss of our previously magnificent maple orchards. But let us guardedly preserve those now remaining to us. Without speaking of the beauty they give to our country, they give us yearly at this season of the year a pleasure which money cannot in any other way purchase. Indeed, the wealth of our millionaires cannot purchase the pleasures of a sugaring-off otherwise than by going to the maple orchard itself. CHAPTER X.